Whose Map is it? New mapping by artists
Introduction to exhibition handout by Denis Wood
''subjects such as policies, resources, territoriality, cultural identity and migration'' So the map is used as a substitute for these subjects, visually it does not depict them but it contains connotations of all these things.
''a desire for more democratic approaches to mapping and access to alternative spatial information.'' The democratic availability of a programme like google earth brings into question the liberality of internet information, what price do we pay for this readily available information? Ignorance is bliss? Perhaps an invasion of privacy. For me there is a sense of loss involved in the satellite photography of the earth, if we presume to know everything about earth then we will not be driven to make new discoveries about it. It is also a very flattened image of earth, it is a document but it is highly edited and could be easily misused to present inaccurate information. How far is the information we consume misguiding or confusing us?
''questioning of the underlying socio-political structures and cultural hierarchies'''What is the use of maps, they are used for locating ourselves in the world, but also exploring other territories, with google earth we have an omniscient perspective on all of earths potential territories, I was particularly interested in the places where there where no indications of scale, place names or boarders. Making the documentary informative nature of the map more abstract and aesthetic.
''a result of the emergence of the internet and the increased urgency of new discussions around globalisation and geopolitics''There are quite strong and thought provoking issues behind mapping today, I'm interested in the reaction between the internet/technology and globalisation, how do they react with and propel each other?
''it makes a mockery of the traditional claim that maps are in any sense a 'representation' of a part of the earth's surface'' This statement is quite contentious because google maps is literally satellite photographs of the earth so it is as close to representation as you can get, especially as it is wrapped around a sphere, perhaps they mean drawn maps. But then is a photograph a representation? How would you most accurately represent the earth's surface without physically being there. This draws in the idea of representing the earth from an outsider perspective, rather than drawing a map from inside earth with limits that do not stretch beyond earths circumference there is the idea of mapping earth as just one planet in space. And also the idea of communicating earth to an alien species, how could you best describe it? But I am not interested in the most accurate description of earth although I am interested in an outsider perspective. I'm interested in mapping the earth's virtual representation, it is infact a map of system which contains the map.
''the map is being redirected from the earth to a cloud of concepts.''
''Map art calls into question the map's service to the state,'' I am always thinking about things in terms of the future so perhaps the state refers to the entire earth if potentially one day there is one world government, perhaps from now on all my art should be positioned in an imaginary future of my own construction. So my work is an imaginary future civilisation using the internet as a resource for constructing histories of now.
''using map fragments, for example, as colour chips to create large realist paintings.'' This is sort of what I am doing, the scale is really important in transforming the map into something iconic and powerful but also fragmented and deconstructed, perhaps I need to take it somewhere where it is less recognisable as a map.
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue10/microtate.htm
'Giorgio de Chirico
The Melancholy of Departure 1916
© DACS, London 2007
Oil on canvas
51.8 x 35.9cm
''Peter Peri on Giorgio de Chirico's The Melancholy of Departure 1916
Many iconic modern paintings have bad titles and some even threaten to compromise the work itself. Jackson Pollock's Lavender Mist comes to mind. Surrealist titles can seem the most dated, but I've always liked Giorgio de Chirico's. They achieve a level of portentousness and repetition that matches the paintings themselves: words like enigma, melancholy and infinite appear almost as regularly as do long shadows and watchful buildings. But it's not only that they match; De Chirico's titles are vital because it's often only through them that a human presence is referenced; the paintings themselves remain impressively unpopulated.
A characteristic of De Chirico's paintings, and Metaphysical painting as a whole, is their ambivalence about distance. The Tate's The Melancholy of Departure is a good example. The top two thirds of the canvas are taken up with an interior containing precariously stacked shapes and sections of wood. Below and in front is a framed depiction of an anonymous coastline seen from an aerial perspective. This sudden shift in scale, between intimate and long range, transmits a shock. It's as if there is a lofty indifference at work, a pessimism that gives the painting monumental and inhuman proportions.
The disjunction between what could be picture frames and what is nearly a map makes fixing on a specific painted element in The Melancholy of Departure seem inappropriate. The title, on the other hand, seems to me to function as the painting's one fixed point and most significant detail. It introduces the possibility of an individual's presence and sentiment, which lends this austere picture the spectre of human feeling.
- The Melancholy of Departure was purchased in 1978 and is on display at Tate Modern.''
